Trumponomics: A Midterm Report Card

Donald Trump won in 2024 because millions of swing voters foolishly believed his economic promises, especially his promise to reverse the rise in prices that took place as the aftermath from Covid snarled global supply chains. If the polls are any indication, many of those voters now feel betrayed: Public approval for Trump’s economic management is incredibly low. As Trump might say, it’s like nothing anyone has ever seen before.

But exactly how bad is the Trump economy? That’s a slightly tricky question to answer. The current state of the U.S. economy isn’t disastrous. We have relatively low unemployment by historical standards. Inflation, while uncomfortably high, isn’t as high as it was during the supply chain shocks of 2021-2022, let alone during the stagflation of the 1970s.

True, many families are facing serious problems of affordability that aren’t fully captured by the Consumer Price Index, especially because of the exploding health care disaster.

Beyond that, Americans are surely angry because of two extreme dissonances: the stark dissonance between what Trump promised and what he has actually delivered, and the equally stark dissonance between Trump’s insistence that we’re experiencing a Golden Age and the definitely not golden financial reality of ordinary Americans’ lives. (And while I won’t discuss it here, Americans are surely angry that as their financial precarity worsens, the Trump family and its minions are raking in billions in graft: polls show that corruption has become a major political issue.)

Furthermore, while the public usually gives presidents too much credit when the economy does well and assigns them too much blame when it does badly, this time around the economy’s problems are Trump all the way. We’d be in much better shape economically if a Democrat or even a sane Republican (if such people still exist) were sitting in the White House.

Today’s primer, then, will be a pre-midterm report card on Trumponomics. I’ll start with a brief overview of the overall state of the economy, then move on to an assessment of Trump policy in four areas where Trump policies have had large effects. Beyond the paywall I will address the following:

1. How the overall economy has changed under Trump II

2. Energy policy and prices

3. Immigration and deportations

4. Tariffs

5. Health care

6. Grading Trump’s performance

Some readers may note that I’m not covering Trump’s oligarch-friendly tax cuts and the ballooning budget deficit. They’re important, but not yet having much political traction. So they’re topics for another day.